Anglicans' new leader: From St. Augustine to Night of the Living Dead

Anglicans' new leader: From St. Augustine to Night of the Living Dead

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: An Old Etonian and the son of a Prohibition-era bootlegger with links to John F. Kennedy is not the normal background for the leader of the world’s 80 million Anglicans.

But Justin Welby, the 56-year-old bishop of Durham, expected to become archbishop of Canterbury, could be just the man to heal the divisions fracturing the Church of England. He is conservative, but pragmatic — he supports the ordination of women, but not homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

His experience in the world includes working as a high-flying oil executive in Nigeria, which he gave up to become an underpaid young priest.

At a time of dwindling church attendance, he has managed to attract new worshippers. As dean of Liverpool, where he almost doubled the cathedral congregation, he gave his blessing to a Halloween service called “Night of the Living Dead,” complete with a man in gothic dress leaping out of a coffin, to illustrate the message of resurrection, The Daily Telegraphreports.

His rise in the church has been rapid: he was ordained in 1992 and became a bishop last year. In an interview with Jonathan Petre and Sharon Churcher of The Daily Mail, Bishop Welby spilled the beans on his rather racy family background.

[He explained] his businessman father was a one-time bootlegger in Prohibition America – who then became an executive for a company that survived the alcohol ban by selling Communion wine.
Recently published letters have also revealed that the bishop’s late father introduced John F. Kennedy to his first mistress, a 21-year-old Swedish aristocrat, weeks before the future president’s marriage to society beauty Jacqueline Bouvier.
In a 1955 letter to Gunilla von Post, JFK wrote: “Did you see in the paper that our friend – the cold, frozen Mr. Gavin Welby – got married to [Winston] Churchill’s secretary? Something must have happened.”

Stephen Glover believes the latest successor to St. Augustine is more grounded in the real world than his donnish predecessor, Rowan Williams.

[W]hereas Dr. Williams was, at heart, a Sixties liberal whose student leftism never really left him, there are good reasons for believing Bishop Welby is, at heart, a social conservative. That said, he has already shown a preoccupation with the plight of the poor, which is what Christ did. Tories get it wrong when they criticize churchmen for laying into selfish and greedy bankers (as Bishop Welby has). Where clerics sometimes err is to advocate particular economic policies, which they are generally not qualified to do.
Although he may seem mild-mannered, I suspect the bishop is pretty steely. He has already spoken out strongly against same-sex marriage, which David Cameron and the [Conservative-Liberal Democrat] Coalition seem intent on introducing. In fact, most Anglican bishops, clergy and even laity would probably side with the bishop on this issue, though not always so robustly.

John Bingham, The Daily Telegraph‘s religious editor, calls the choice of Welby a decisive break with the past.

At a time when the Church is grappling with the aftermath of the banking crisis, he combines – almost uniquely – an understanding of the working of the City with that of life in the inner city, gleaned as a parish priest and dean of Liverpool.
He has used his seat in the Lords as a platform to challenge the “sins” of the multi-billion pound banks as much as the small-scale payday “loan sharks” he has seen at work [in his see in] the North East – condemning the practice in the language of the Old Testament as “usury”.
Although educated at Eton and Cambridge and even a member of a Pall Mall club, he is seen as far from an establishment figure. Theologically, he is unashamedly part of the evangelical strand of the Church, upholding a more traditional and conservative interpretation of the Bible than some.

Writing in The Guardian, Andrew Brown debunks the idea the new Primate of All England is out of touch because of his privileged background.

Eton is such a hothouse that no one comes out of it without a sneaking suspicion that he may not quite be the crown of creation. In some of them this appears as a restless and devouring ambition. In others, this insecurity translates into a genuine humility rather than the modesty that all Etonians affect so well …
There is one other possible advantage to a Christian in attending Eton. It really would be impossible to graduate from there with a starry-eyed view of human nature. Nothing much shocks an Etonian because they have seen it all before the sixth form – they expect treachery and ambition to be the human norm (si monumentum requiris, Boris Johnson). And if God can redeem an Etonian, he can redeem anyone.